


Order of Rejection

by staringatstars



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Bets & Wagers, Bittersweet Ending, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-08 11:33:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12863622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staringatstars/pseuds/staringatstars
Summary: "Lunches with the team aren't mandatory," they told him. "We're not going to make you do anything you don't want to do." And Hanzo had nodded, knowing a lie when he heard one.





	Order of Rejection

Though generally meals were held in the kitchen, a small and quaint yellow-tiled alcove with enough room for cabinets, a stove, and a table slightly larger than a nightstand, there was a lounge area in the Watchpoint base that could pass for a canteen, as it employed an aesthetic more similar to a high school cafeteria than a homey dining room. With that said, Hanzo’s experience with cafeterias and the like tended to stem from the snippets of teenaged dramas he’d managed to glimpse over Genji’s shoulders in their youth, and therefore his confidence in the comparison was flimsy at best. 

Not for any particular reason, Winston had deemed it fit to serve rice, noodles, and sashimi for lunch in a buffet-style fashion as a gift to the more recent Overwatch recruits and veterans alike. 

Unsurprisingly, Hanzo had found himself sitting with his brother and the cowboy, because while he might have gotten away with sitting by himself or among the rowdy group of veterans and new recruits seated towards the front under normal circumstances, Genji had visibly beckoned him over, leaving him with the uncomfortable choice of sitting with him or blatantly ignoring him, thereby spitting in the face of his good faith while in full view of the majority of his – their – teammates.

Where Hanzo held little interest in making friends, he held even less in making enemies. 

And so he sat stiffly down beside him with a bowl of plain rice, noting silently the absence of any form of sustenance in front of the cyborg while the cowboy seemed to struggle with his chopsticks as he repeatedly dropped the same piece of tuna into his soy sauce. They traded lighthearted barbs and digs easily, neither of them worried about accidentally taking the teasing too far, about damaging pride or ego when they knew each other well enough to effortlessly avoid the invisible lines, and as the meal dragged on, it occurred to Hanzo, not for the first time, that out of every member of Overwatch, he probably knew the least about his brother. 

He kept trying to look for old mannerisms, imagining attitudes and expressions that the cyborg seemed to have outgrown over the years of meditation and self-reflection, yet Hanzo couldn’t help but feel as though he were trying to navigate a landscape both familiar and unrecognizable. Genji was alive, but did that truly mean that Hanzo had gotten his brother back? Deep down, the archer was certain that regardless of Genji’s survival, his little brother had died in Hanamura, died at his hand. 

And there was no coming back from that. 

“Hey, Earth to Hanzo?” Hanzo jerked at the rasp of metal fingers snapping in front of his face, hissing a curse under his breath as he turned to glare at the expressionless faceplate of the cyborg sitting next to him. “Come,” Genji clapped a hand on his shoulder that Hanzo instantly wished he could shake off, “you have spent enough time in your own head, brother. Try spending some of it with me.”

Struck by the familiarity of the statement, as well as a note of well-worn bitterness cleverly hidden beneath the light tone, Hanzo tensed, his dark eyes widening just a fraction.

After observing his reaction, Genji resignedly exhaled, “Right,” before making an effort to pick up where he’d left off, “Now, before I was so rudely ignored-“

Thrown off by the light chiding, Hanzo automatically protested, “I was not –“

“And now you are interrupting.” The archer instantly fell silent, biting down hard on his lower lip to keep himself from firing off a retort. 

When it became apparent that he was not going to speak again, though the heat of those unspoken words tasted like acid on his tongue, Genji gestured to the cowboy with his chopsticks, before adding in a stage-whisper of their native language, “ _You see how Jesse has a bento, right?_ ” It was small, black, roughly the size of a child’s, and teetering dangerously at the edge of the table while McCree attempted to scoop up the rice with his foreign utensils. Genji chuckled under his breath. “ _Ten dollars says he dumps the entirety of it in his lap in the next five minutes._ ” Placing an elbow on the table, he leaned challengingly forward, “ _What do you say, anija?_ ”

From across the table and with his latest morsel of rice poised at his lips, McCree narrowed his eyes at the pair. Hanzo stared back, his own gaze appraising. 

“ _You underestimate him_ ,” the archer said. He could almost see Genji’s quirked eyebrow as his body shifted slightly in surprise. Nevertheless, he continued, “ _I say he will not last longer than one._ ”

“You know that I can hear you both, right?”

Fixing the cowboy with a patronizing stare, Hanzo crossed his arms over his chest and scoffed, “It is good to know that your ears are in working condition, gunslinger. Given your performance in training this morning, I was beginning to wonder.“

Outraged by the slight, McCree threw out his chopsticks to point aggressively at the archer, flinging grains of rice as he did so, only to yelp when his bento finally overbalanced and tipped, dumping its contents onto his lap. A smug grin tugging at his lips, Hanzo wordlessly held out an open palm. 

The silence stretched, broken only by McCree’s grumbles, as Genji alternated between staring at the outstretched hand and glancing at the cowboy.“Hey, Jesse, do you have 10 dollars on you that I could borrow?” The cowboy paused in his efforts to gather what clumps of sticky rice he could to glare at the cyborg. Completely unfazed, Genji merely shrugged. “It is kind of your fault that I lost.”

Having lowered his arm at some point during that particular exchange, Hanzo watched, fascinated, as the cowboy’s cheeks seemed to change color from a light bronze to a mottled red that matched well with his serape. From several tables over, the rumble of an avalanche could be heard as Reinhardt guffawed and D.Va snickered, her arm draped over Lucio as he fought to maintain a straight face. Apparently, their little bet had gained an audience.

A jarring crackle cut through it all, followed by a gentle string of laughter that, though distorted, could have only ever belonged to one person. 

In the darkness of his mind, Hanzo could easily see the picture painted on the backs of his lids, the mischievous glint, the crinkle of mirth at the corners of eyes made darker through pain and sickness, yet so unmistakably _his_. And a part of his heart that had always been disconnected from the rest, alienated and dangling by a thread of loose connective tissue, finally slipped back into place. 

It was a miracle that it still fit at all, a miracle that there was anything left for it to join. More than once, Hanzo had pondered if, should the vital organ be pierced, he would bleed out pieces of a rotted, dusty thing. 

“Hanzo?” 

Metal scraped metal as the latches of Genji’s visor came undone, but before he could remove it entirely, a hand shot out to grip his wrist, and he froze, uncertain of what to expect from the near feverish light in his brother’s gaze. “Leave it on,” Hanzo said shortly, only to flinch at the harshness of it. It felt strange to express his swirling thoughts in a language that didn’t quite fit him the way he wanted it to. English was too sharp, too blocky to properly convey his meaning, so he cast it aside in favor of using their shared language once more, the closest they could get to privacy in a room filled with people. 

Letting his arm fall to his side, Hanzo searched until instinct told him he’d found Genji’s gaze through the visor, and he held it, “ _You really are him, aren't you?_ ” 

An arm wrapped around his shoulders, its metal touch warmer than he’d imagined, warmer than a human could be, as it almost painfully gripped his shoulder, but it was real, physical, tangible, an undeniable part of the brother he’d long thought dead. It was only then, with the truth shining blindingly in his face, that the sheer magnitude of what he had done struck him, and unprepared as he was, he rocked with the blow. Instead of taking his brother’s life in a misguided attempt to salvage what had remained of his honor, Hanzo had instead cursed him to a life dependent on others, turned him into a weapon to be used and discarded, the one thing he had never wanted to be. 

A tightness made itself known in Hanzo’s chest as his throat began to constrict and a disorienting lightness threatened to wrest his composure from him. Acting out of an instinctual sense of self-preservation, he struggled to disentangle himself from the cyborg’s grasp, until finally the iron grip gave way and he leapt to his feet. Without pausing to allow either the cowboy or his brother time to process this sudden change, he broke into a sprint, allowing his legs to guide him, for he cared not where he found himself as long as it was somewhere where the flightless sparrow could not reach him. 

He couldn’t breath with frozen lungs, yet the whir of spinning gears and servos only followed him, growing louder. “Leave me be, Genji,” he hissed, lashing out the way sick and injured creatures do. 

“ _You cannot keep running like this, anija._ ” Genji was pleading with him, trying to reason with him, but all Hanzo could hear from the desperate entreaty was pity. He staggered to the door, ignoring the others beginning to rise as they realized something was wrong. Before they could get far, though, Genji snapped out a warning, told them he could handle this, as if Hanzo were some kind of rabid beast to be tamed. Controlled. Metal fingers clamped over Hanzo’s wrist, scalding him with their heat. “ _I want to help you, but in order for me to do so you must let me in._ ”

Overwhelmed by the sensation of his own body collapsing in on itself with a thousand approving eyes watching, Hanzo jerked, rapidly working himself into a frenzy as he fought to escape the hold. When no exit immediately made itself apparent, however, as Genji’s immovable grip effectively kept him prisoner, Hanzo whirled on him in a panicked fury, snarling blindly, “ _I said ‘leave me be’ you damn machine!_ ” 

Stumbling backwards, Genji reeled as though splashed with acid. Quiet smothered sound, leaving only the harshness of Hanzo’s own labored breaths, and it grated. The others had frozen, unable to believe what they had heard, but they were all staring at him, their eyes and faces of the other Overwatch members looming impossibly large. Their disdain for him was palpable, so much so that Hanzo could feel it clinging like oil to his skin, could taste its rot in his mouth. And he couldn’t take it – none of it. 

The room swayed dangerously. His knees buckled. 

“Shit, someone catch him!”

It was useless. Catching the broken pieces of a shattered vase would not be enough to put it back together again. He was water slipping through the cracks, a million grains of sand that had once been stone, and yet, as though they had always been there, a pair of steady and unwavering arms halted his descent. There was no softness, no give, only a quiet strength, as warmth and calm emanated from the greatest testament to his failure, from the one most deserving of retribution. Try as he might, Hanzo could not wrap his mind around the kindness. Everything he’d learned and experienced suggested that it was impossible, and yet Genji was real, and the visor was removed, allowing him to see the brows drawn together in worry, just like they once had. 

Shame, disconnected but still present, welled from the edges of his awareness. How humiliating it was that he would lose himself to weakness like this in front of so many strangers and for such a ridiculous reason, yet unconsciousness was a siren’s call, drowning out the sound of his own name as it was repeated urgently and with growing alarm as the shadows encroached on his vision. 

Recalling the cyborg’s honest laughter from before, Hanzo cursed under his breath, though whether the garbled, strangled sound which passed his lips could be called such was debatable. It seemed nothing wanted to cooperate, not his body nor his voice nor even his mind, since the words which raced over his head gradually lost any meaning, and he sank further down, away from the flaring, too bright green surrounding him, except it chased him, following him into the depths to keep the worst of the dark at bay, and when at last he woke again, having come to with that disorienting gradualness that often accompanied such unnatural lapses, it was to see that same soft illumination coming from a chair at his bedside. 

He sat up with a frown, irritation sweeping through him at the realization that someone must have carried him back to his quarters. Genji twitched, kicking slightly in his sleep, and Hanzo stilled, unwilling to wake him if it meant hastening what was bound to be a very uncomfortable conversation. 

On a stand lay the visor Genji so commonly wore. Without the tension and worry from before, he appeared younger, though not entirely unburdened in sleep. Pushing past the scarring as best he could, Hanzo made note of the maturity present in his features, the shallow pools of exhaustion beneath his eyes. 

Awakening with a start, Genji scrambled to reattach his mask. Hanzo frowned. “I did not request that you leave it on before,” the latches clicked into place, wisps of steam venting from his ports now that he was awake, “because I was unwilling to see your face.”

Slouched in his seat with his arms crossed over his chest, Genji scoffed, making his skepticism known. “Forgive me, _anija_ , if I do not take your word for it.” He paused with a mechanical hum. “Jesse sends his regards. Though he claims you should start cutting back on the rice. Apparently, you almost broke his back.”

Hearing that, a thick brow rose to Hanzo's hairline. “At least _I_ know how to eat rice.”

The unexpected retort, haughty with the slightest hint of sulkiness, elicited an amused snicker from the cyborg, blindsiding him. These past few weeks certainly had been filled to the brim with their share of miracles. 

Eventually, he forced himself to focus, and coughed. “What time is it?” He glanced towards the doors, questioning the competency of Overwatch when they would leave one of their most valued agents alone with the man who had once tried to murder him, and very nearly succeeded. “Should you not be with the others? 

Though he could not help but sigh at the obvious distraction, Genji nonetheless replied as he lifted himself out of his seat, “I was waiting for you. You have been out for hours, Hanzo.” His visored gaze settled on a point beyond the room’s confines. “Everyone is having dinner.” When he hesitated, Hanzo read uncertainty in his bearing for the first time. “I understand that you may need some time to recover, and Dr. Ziegler said she would save you a plate, but… Would you be willing to join us?”

It was a only request, Hanzo knew, even as he ignored the lingering weight in his limbs to slip soundlessly from the mattress, soon becoming aware of the subtle lightness in the cyborg’s steps when they strode through the halls together, but when the right to refuse had been forfeited, was it any wonder that acquiesce tasted like obedience?

**Author's Note:**

> When I first started this, the only thing I had in mind was the joke, since I had dropped a bento on myself earlier and was subsequently inspired. When Genji laughed, however, it came to me that it might be the first time Hanzo has heard him laugh since Hanamura, which could wind up being the key to convincing him that it really is Genji. And at first, that was where I ended it, with a sappy reconciliation. But it didn't feel earned, so I scrapped that idea, tossed the notion that the one-shot had to have a happy or even a conclusive ending aside, and this is where we're at.


End file.
